I didn’t understand that as a white bloke, born in an English speaking country to parents who valued education, that I had already won life’s lottery. I’m ashamed to admit that I genuinely believed for a while that success was merely a matter of talent and work. I’m Gen-X, and I’m very grateful to have been lucky enough to have experienced what I genuinely think might have been society’s golden years when I was able to enjoy them

Then I saw more of the world and grew up a bit. I grew to understand that talent and work definitely help, but they don’t help equally, and that there were people with immense talent who could work their arses off, and they would just never get the chance to shine like an average person from the world I knew

I worked, and I shone, and I made some money, and now I have a modest life in a small place because it’s more important to me to do stuff that helps the world rather than to rapaciously accumulate more, purely for its own sake

I plan to die without a single thing to my name, but I hope that what I have done and what I’ve tried to give back have made the world slightly less shitty